Social workers in Scotland recently rescued a pet monkey from the filthy, drug-infested apartment of a couple of heroin addicts. Contacting an animal-welfare group, the social workers took great pains to make sure the animal was removed from the squalid cesspool of a home.

But the social workers neglected to do anything about the little girl living with the couple.

The 5-year-old’s fingernails had not been cut for more than a year, she was covered in bed sores, lying in human waste and wearing a plaster cast on her broken leg that should have been removed 10 months earlier. When doctors eventually removed the cast from the girl, whose leg has been permanently scarred, they found spoons, a fork, and a pen she had used to try to scratch her ulcers.

A judge rebuked the social workers, noting incredulously that they had visited the couple’s house 18 times and had gone inside four times, but had failed to take note of or do anything about the poor girl’s plight.

Hang on to that picture for a minute.

PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is the largest animal-rights organization on the planet, boasting 600,000 members.

The group has an impressive record of getting business, industry and government to be kinder to animals. With the central theme of preventing cruelty to animals, the group has waged a long and successful campaign against research, scientific and product testing involving animals.

To demonstrate its corporate citizenship in promoting alternative methods of testing, PETA has made grants totaling $300,000 to two research firms “to assist in the validation of non-animal test methods to replace existing animal tests.” What sort of non-animal testing? How about human embryos?

As reported in WorldNetDaily, although one of the two firms funded by PETA has denied using human embryos for their testing, the other has not. Human babies, you see, are not as important as rats.

The general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Rev. Msgr. Dennis N. Schnurr, in his letter to the NIH, charges that “the policy of the new NIH guidelines is that human embryos outside the womb may be exploited and killed as nothing more than ’tissue.’ In short,” he says, “live human embryos are dismissed as mere ’tissue’ to be destroyed for useful cells.”

“Under this policy,” concludes Schnurr, “far from being treated as a human subject, the human embryo effectively ranks lower in status than a laboratory animal.”

Humans lower than animals? Is there a pattern developing here?

I always thought PETA just wanted to put a stop to homeless dogs’ being burned alive and similar horror stories, as their home page indicates. But moving beyond the shiny exterior with its heart-wrenching animal-abuse stories designed to appeal to large numbers of people and attract donations, I find this:

“For kids who want to eat their veggies and not their friends,” PETA draws children into campaigns to “Save the Chickens,” and to “Save the Pigs.”

What about “Save the Babies”? I couldn’t find that campaign. Can someone send me the link?

Wait, maybe this is it, on one of PETA.com’s many niche marketing spin-off sites called Jesusveg.com. (That’s the one for Christians, there’s also IslamicConcern.com for Muslims.)

By the way, the statement “Jesus was a vegetarian” is a lie. The Bible, which I presume is the source of PETA’s information about Jesus, clearly states that Jesus ate fish, even after his resurrection.

But I digress. In “Jesus was a vegetarian,” PETA poses to itself one of the key questions that people ask of the organization, and of animal rights activists in general:

“Why don’t you focus your attention on abortion or child abuse? Why do you care about animals?”

PETA’s answer, addressed specifically to Christian, pro-lifer types:

“… Those who are particularly adamant on the abortion issue should also consider the issue of vegetarianism, as it requires no additional effort and lends the credibility of personal action to their statements about being ‘pro-life.’

“… With the issue of abortion, few of us will ever have to make this choice, and no one can make this choice for someone else, however much some people might
wish to.

“But there is one area where the solution is simple: the issue of animal abuse on factory farms. Each and every one of us can simply choose not to be animal abusers by becoming a vegetarian.”

Okay, let’s get this straight. No one has the right to tell another person that it’s wrong to kill the living, breathing, pain-feeling human baby living inside its mother. That’s her business alone if she wants to kill it, so butt out.

There’s more: “If we purport to be ‘pro-life,’ yet we choose to support violence, misery, and death every time we sit down to eat, what does that say about our convictions? For a simple palate preference, we have become ‘pro-death,’ we are paying for cruelty to animals. The only legitimate Christian or ‘pro-life’ choice is vegetarianism.”

What are we dealing with here? Just some wacky, lovable, slightly-off-base critter-loving friends of animals?

Let’s take a deeper look.

A human being — from the moment of its conception, and as the delicate and ethereal fabric grows with its tiny, perfectly formed fingers and toes, little heartbeats, little lips, little ears, shrouded peacefully in its mother’s womb — is undoubtedly the crowning glory of creation.

“Created in His image,” the human baby at whatever stage is, simply, sacred.

So of course, good-natured, decent pro-lifers are always scratching their heads and asking the animal-rights crowd, “Why don’t you folks care about the aborted babies?”

Take a really good look at PETA’s response. Look at the tortured reasoning. Notice the unfriendly tone, the disdainful use of quotes around the phrase “pro-life.” Do these seem like the words of an organization that really cares about aborting humans?

No. But they’re hoping you won’t notice. They’re hoping you’ll think, “Oh well, PETA just carved out this little niche of saving dogs and cats and chickens and pigs, but they really care about human babies too.”

Wrong.

The most PETA can grudgingly offer up in support of human life is, “Those who are particularly adamant on the abortion issue should also consider the issue of vegetarianism, as it … lends the credibility of personal action to their statements about being ‘pro-life.'”

Pitiful. By the way, PETA’s core argument is the prevention of needless suffering to all life. Do they think unborn babies do not suffer? The research – all of it – says that early on, human beings have a nervous system and feel real pain. Their nerves and pain receptor cells don’t suddenly switch on the moment they exit their mother’s womb. They feel the abortionist’s scalpel, they feel the forceps, the suction devices, skull crushers and other torture implements used in the various barbaric rituals of infant sacrifice that we call abortion.

If PETA really cared about human life, it would have answered the question something like this: “Although abortion is the worst travesty, the greatest injustice, and the most egregious cause of needless suffering on the planet today, we at PETA have chosen to come to the defense of animals, since not many people have the will or the means to do so. But we know our mission pales into nothingness next to the horrendous ongoing tragedy of tens of millions of innocent human babies killed painfully, sometimes meeting excruciating deaths, every year while in their mother’s wombs. We salute our brothers and sisters in the pro-life movement for their dedication and commitment to end this needless suffering.”

Sorry, it’s just a nice dream. The reality is that you pro-lifers are the enemy of the radical animal-rights crowd. Because you, through your standing up for the little divine spark in God’s most perfect and prized creation, are championing the very reality – namely, the existence of the soul in human beings — that they want to forget. The real message of the radical animal rights movement is that people are only animals – and not very good ones at that.

Elevating animals up to the level of human beings — as actor Steven Segal, one of PETA’s celebrity advocates, puts it, “We have to view all life as equal” — is a round about way of saying that human beings are no more than animals and therefore have no souls.

Why would anyone deny that human beings have a soul, you might ask. Why would that notion that we have a divine spark within us be repugnant? After all, whatever goodness we humans can muster, whatever kindness and consideration we have for each other, is based on the fact that we know we are dealing with another soul. If we are faithful to our spouse, honorable in business, truthful to each other, willing to sacrifice for our children – whatever we consider to be virtuous and noble is tied up in this conviction that we are more than animals, that we are spiritual beings also, esteemed by God.

For many, there is a great comfort and “freedom” in believing that there is no soul, because if there is no soul, there is no God, no divine judgment, no accountability — you get the picture. We’re animals, so we act like animals, we do what animals do. They eat each other, mate in the street, run around naked – kind of like the ’60s again, with “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”

The radical animal rights folks are exactly like the multiculturalists. Do you think the multiculturalists really care about Eskimo music or how the Ubangis make their lips as big as pancakes? Do they really care that much about cultures that worship rats, cows and sex organs? No, their interest is not really in elevating other cultures, nor in celebrating diversity.

Their interest is in tearing down Western civilization, in denying God, in denying the immortal soul of man — denying that we will be judged one day by One greater than us.

In the same way, the animal rights radicals don’t really love animals. They don’t even know the meaning of the word love. They just want to be their own gods. And the way you become your own god in this life is to deny the real One.

Animal-rights radicals loathe the idea of man having an immortal soul, of his being superior to the animals, because if we are superior to animals it is because we have a soul, and that reality makes us subservient to something greater than ourselves. And, as I said, some people just want to be their own god.

Besides, many people just don’t get along with other people. After all, people give you a hard time, they can criticize you, they can even tell you the truth when you don’t want to hear it. Animals never do that.